Pastor running for Missouri Senate blames mental illness on "demon possession"

Joe Nicola, a Republican candidate in Missouri, has a long history of faith-based extremism

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In 2017, Joe Nicola, a pastor at New Covenant Ministries in Independence, Missouri, wrote on his now-defunct personal website that mental illness didn’t exist… at least not the way we think about it. There couldn’t possibly be anything wrong with the brains God gave us. If problems emerged, they could only be blamed on one thing: Satan.

Let me say right off that I am not saying mental illness does not exist. I do believe, however, that we are overlooking a very important scriptural truth – demon possession. Demon possession is real and is more common then we may think. Not one person that Jesus dealt with was diagnosed mental illness – not one. The Bible tells us they were demon possessed and the only way to deal with it is to cast the demon out, not give it drugs. That is how Jesus handled it and He gave us the authority to do it as well.

That sentiment, echoed by other thoughtless pastors, might be forgettable if this guy existed in the silo of his Christian community. But Nicola is now a Republican nominee for Missouri State Senate, and he may soon have the power to decide how to spend taxpayer dollars to address mental illness along with a host of other (very real) problems. Should people be worried that he’ll spend that money on Bibles instead of anything useful?

Joe Nicola (screenshot via YouTube)

It’s become enough of an issue in the campaign that Nicola recently released a video titled “Response to Mental Illness”—which is a horrible title for this kind of video—in which he claimed he totally doesn’t believe demons are responsible for mental illness. At least not entirely.

… There are many causes of mental illness. Most often, it is a result of some form of trauma…

… I am also a pastor and, in that capacity, I have the responsibility to preach and teach from the Scriptures, as well as help people heal from all sorts of trauma in their lives. I'm not a mental illness expert, but I have helped many people find healing over the years in my ministry. I'm certainly not against using medications. I am for finding solutions and real healing…

At no point in the video did he say demons had nothing to do with mental illness. Claiming mental illness is mostly the result of trauma isn’t just false—biological factors that are out of your control arguably play a bigger role—it just moves the goalposts. It allows Christians like Nicola to say Satan is responsible for the trauma and that accepting Jesus must be a part of the solution, even if medications may be involved.

But that’s not the only problem with Nicola.

This is a guy who spread lies about COVID vaccines and refused to close his church during the worst of the pandemic.

This is a guy who, in a post about “enemies” of the church, said that some Christian churches in 1930s Germany used to display “a picture of Hitler and a Nazi flag,” but now “some churches are flying a different flag, a rainbow flag.”

This is a guy who thinks Christians are being manipulated by liberal ideas… like “compassion” and “justice” and “generosity”:

Using terms like social justice, racism, white privilege, compassion, common ground, generosity, tolerance, acceptance and unity while perverting the true Biblical definition and context. The enemy is working from within to conquer and divide. Look for other Biblical terms to be hijacked and redefined. 

Globalism, Sustainability, Social Justice, Immigration, Environmentalism, Collectivism, Economic Justice, Climate Change, Critical Race Theory and other agendas are being used to prey on the heart strings of Christians to change Christianity in America by moving us into Socialism. 

This is a guy who, a few days after the January 6, 2021 insurrection attempt at the Capitol, falsely blamed the attack on “the ANTIFA and anarchists that were the instigators” (around the 20:00 mark here). And who then went on a quick tangent defending political violence. (The audio is low quality in the original.)

… What we saw, if you saw it, I'm sure you did, a rally at D.C. this week… The ANTIFA and Anarchists that were the instigators in this breach into D.C. And obviously, it's blamed on Trump supporters. It looked like a bunch of them, too. You always have bad apples in a group.

…

But let me ask the question: Is it ever right for a believer to be violent? [Shouts from the congregation: Yes. Yes.] Whaaaaat?! [Yes. What do you think revolution looks like?] Have you heard, like I have from a lot of well-meaning people, even believers, tamp down the whole “violence” aspect? Not just of what happened in D.C., but I'm talking about revolution. Has anybody? Because I've heard it from a lot of different places. And it's a little troubling to me, to be quite honest. I'm not advocating violence, but I am advocating freedom. Freedom at all costs and freedom for whatever it takes.

It’s never good when someone says, “I’m not advocating violence, but…”

This is a guy who told a Republican audience that they needed to be more careful when it came to speaking out against abortion because going full anti-choice was a “candidate killer”—but that, if he got elected, he would work with Republicans to overrule or “soften” the ballot measure to enshrine reproductive freedom in the state constitution.

This is a guy who said in a campaign ad that Missouri should “decouple” from the federal government when it comes to funding public education, a move that, if implemented, would blow “a $3.6 BILLION hole in Missouri's public education budget,” according to a Democratic-aligned PAC. That same group also noted that Nicola claimed only 10% of the state’s education budget came from the federal government. The actual number was closer to 40% in 2024.

This is also a guy who, despite his claims to separate his faith from his politics if elected, doesn’t believe there should be any separation between the two worlds at all:

Nicola, in a July interview with The Star, said he teaches his congregation to be an active part of society, including politics. His church has also donated money to a political action committee that supports his candidacy, a move questioned by legal experts.

“There’s no such thing as separation of church and state,” Nicola said in the July interview about the church donations. “That’s a misnomer.”

A lot of these details are highlighted in an important article by the Kansas City Star’s Kacen Bayless. Nicola’s Democratic opponent, Robert Sauls, also weighed in on the worst of Nicola’s beliefs:

Sauls, the Democratic nominee, said he was troubled by Nicola’s post, saying it raised questions about how he would handle policy decisions such as funding for the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

“I can tell you that PTSD is a real thing, you know, it’s not demonic possession. It’s not something that, you know, you can just hope that it goes away, right? Or pray for it to go away,” he said. “Mental health is a very real thing, and if you live in this society, you see it on an ongoing basis.”

That’s a very polite way to say Nicola is batshit crazy as a direct result of his religious delusions. In fact, Nicola is so extreme that the typically conservative Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry has endorsed Democrat Robert Sauls.

The fact that Nicola is trying to distance himself from his Christian beliefs should be a warning for everyone in his district: He hasn’t changed his mind about any of those views. He’s just afraid of people finding out what those views are. The strategy is pretty straightforward: Jesus will forgive you if you deceive everyone in the name of Jesus, get elected, then impose those Christian Nationalist beliefs across the state.

Better than being honest about your views and getting pilloried by voters who don’t want Christian extremists running their state at a time when basic human rights are literally on their ballot.

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